Chapter 35: Chapter 35 A Violent Debrief

Sudraiel waited a moment, then waved a wrinkled hand and prompted them kindly. “Well then, Hisla told me what you told her downstairs. Can you give a more detailed report? Khachi. Start from the beginning.”

Khachi was clearly intimidated by the Guildmistress, but after wetting his lips, he spoke. “Y-yes. Apologies. We departed on our Blooding Patrol early this morning, then reached our patrol area quickly. We surveyed the area and spotted signs of a Stalker nest.” Khachi nodded his head towards Nathan. “Then we proceeded towards it, ready for their ambush. There were seventeen stalkers and a Patriarch in that nest, but we triumphed with no great risk and no expenditure of permanent resources.” He paused for a moment to see if there were any questions.

The Knuld - Siltul - spoke for the first time. His voice was high-pitched, dry and clipped. “Three questions. Where was the nest? Were the bodies disposed of? Did you harvest anything?”

Khachi continued the report. “It was located about five city blocks west-southwest from the old community hall that was the landmark of our patrol. Ruined residential building, nothing notable about it. Stella Caxol incinerated the bodies to an acceptable level after the fighting. We harvested a few teeth, especially from the Patriarch.”

Aarl brought out the two canines from the Stalker Patriarch. Nathan shivered at the sight of the foot-long pieces of sharpened ivory. They scared him more as trophies than they had while they were in the mouth of the thing trying to eat him. Go figure.

Siltul made some notes on his slate, speaking as he did so. “Commendable for a first patrol, both in execution and cleanup. Please continue.”

After a deep breath, Khachi continued. “After that, we proceeded to finish the patrol. We surveyed both sides of the transit road over the course of several hours. We encountered the new dungeon at maximum patrol distance to the East of the north transit road, on a secondary boulevard. I would be able to mark it on a map. As for the dungeon itself, it was hidden by magic. Very well hidden. There were illusions and mental magic involved, and I’ll let Nathan Lark describe what happened. He got the best look past all of that. Most of us were… disabled.”

Everybody’s eyes tracked to Nathan. The Heirs were watching him just as intently as Siltul and the Guildmistress. Nathan supposed that he wasn’t sure how much of the fight they’d seen through the broken illusion, look-away magic and stupefaction beams. The Heirs hadn't taken a break to talk since then, and they probably wanted to know what Nathan's perspective on the whole thing had been. So, Nathan considered for a moment before launching into his tale.

“We were walking along the street when I noticed we weren’t in formation. I looked around and noticed a magical effect of some kind, both a look-away and an illusion covering a building and steering us away from it. I thought it might be a Giantsrest ambush, so I broke the illusion. It was covering a fortified building, not a group of Giantsrest mages. There were two bunkers on either side of the single entrance, and eight of these weird four-legged metal constructs. They had two slashing arms and could fire a bunch of different types of magic.”

Sarah broke in there. “Sentry constructs of old Gemore. Stanel described them to us once.” She swallowed, as if just recalling something. “And told us to hope we never ran into any.”

There was a moment of silence. Siltul’s chalk made a few brief, hesitant marks. He looked uncertainly at Sudraiel.

The Guildmistress looked thunderously upset. “Describe their magic, and attacks. In detail.”

Nathan shrugged. “They started by hitting me with… small bolts of fire, blades of force, lightning and a spray of acid. When that didn’t work, they shifted to other attacks. I remember spikes of ice, a spell of pure cold, some bolts of death mana. Also light mana beams, sharpened bolts of force and balls of stone. They tried pretty comprehensively to find a weakness.”

Sudraiel’s face had been growing darker as he spoke, and she hissed as he finished. “That matches their full spell repertoire. Siltul, mark that as confirmation of eight fully functional old Gemore sentry constructs.” She spoke the last words as you would a curse, then gestured for Nathan to continue.

“The bunkers had two armaments. Each one had a turret on top that fired enchanted metal bolts. Accurate and armor-piercing. One went straight through me, and others pierced Khachi’s shield. Stella was hit in the first salvo.”

Khachi lifted his shield, which served as a wonderful way to display the two-foot metal bolts and their penetrating power. Stella again fingered the tear in her enchanted robes.

Nathan continued. “But that wasn’t the worst part. The bunkers also had these… beam things on the front. Six on each, twelve total. They cast a ray of barely visible light that could stun people. I don’t know what it felt like, but those pinned down the rest of my team pretty well.” He looked back at Aarl. “What was it like?”

Aarl replied, shaking his head. “Like somebody was casting [Daze] on you multiple times a second. We’ve all got our ways to deal with mind magic, but that was just too much. Especially when there were multiple of those things focused on each of us. Hear me, but it was a good thing Nathan was immune.”

Nathan shuddered. That sounded awful, just being continually dazed while you knew death approached. Then he cleared his throat. “Right. This won’t make much sense if I don’t tell you I took my level 27 class development right then and had some new abilities. Not going to go into details, but it let me get past the sentries and to the bunkers. They were protected by a triple-layer force barrier. Each one was… tougher than what Stella can cast.” He shot an apologetic look at the auburn-haired mage.

She waved it away, clearly not upset at being outclassed by an ancient dungeon’s defenses.

Nathan turned towards Sudraiel again. “Right. So I got through the barriers, then broke all of the [Daze] beams on one of the bunkers while climbing to the top to get away from the sentry constructs. I was trying to break the turret that was shooting bolts when this… crystal thing above the door hit me with a bolt of lightning.” Nathan did some quick math based on mana conversion efficiencies and how much stamina the lightning bolt had restored. “I think it was at least a… 700 mana spell?”

Improved memory coming to the rescue!

There was a quiet exhalation from the other Heirs. Stella’s shocked voice “Dragon’s breath. More than 700?”

Siltul broke in, his voice dry and a little sarcastic. “That number appears plucked from the grave. Do you have a way to quantify the power of spells cast against you? I also find it hard to believe you survived such a spell.”

Stella jumped in. “He survived a [Disintegrate]. And can estimate spell strength pretty accurately, at least with me and my parents in practice. Still, 700? Nathan, are you sure?” Stella was looking at him like she’d never seen him before.

Nathan shrugged. He supposed that was probably about three times Stella's entire mana pool up to this point, so it made sense she was shocked. “The lightning nearly melted the turret I was trying to break. It was a strong spell. Anyway, I jumped to the other bunker and was able to break that turret without a bolt of lightning. Just reached inside and ripped out something involved in targeting. Then I broke the other [Daze] beams and dodged past the Sentries to come back to the Heirs, who had escaped into the buildings after I broke the [Daze] beam thingies.”

He equivocated a bit, waving his arms around. “It was a bit more complicated than that, but I don’t need to give a play by play. After that we thought about trying to take down the Sentries but there was some sort of light spell - not an enchantment - carved into the building that was starting to power up. So we left. And came straight back here.”

Nathan paused, about to indicate his tale was done. Then he remembered another detail. One he probably should have mentioned earlier. “Ah. One more thing. There were bodies in the street in front of the building, covered by the illusion. They were wearing armor and some of them were pretty old. I didn’t count them, but… maybe two dozen?”

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Sudraiel put her palms over her eyes for a moment, then shot a look at Siltul before turning back to the Heirs. “To summarize and ensure understanding. A building of Old Gemore, hidden by mental and illusion magic. Behind that magic were eight sentry constructs, two turrets firing enchanted armor-piercing bolts, twelve [Daze] beams, a short-range defensive crystal capable of extraordinarily powerful lightning magic. All protected by a triple-force shield. Then further unknown defenses you did not see active, including a single-shot spellform glyph in the old Gemore style. The turrets and [Daze] beams are now disabled, assuming there’s no [Repair] functionality. Yes?”

They all nodded at Sudraiel’s summary. There was another detail that was niggling at Nathan. “The Sentries were creeping up to ambush us before the illusion dropped. Taken by surprise and not even paying attention from the look-away? It would have been a very scary ambush.”

Sudraiel just sat there for a moment. She was old, but every time Nathan had seen her she’d seemed so intent that it was easy to forget her apparent age. Her gray eyes had been focused, her questions direct. Now she gazed off into the distance for a moment, looking positively ancient. Her mouth opened unconsciously, and Nathan thought she was going to moan. Then she stood up and with a casual motion hurled her chair out the window.

It wasn’t a small chair, and Nathan goggled as the nearly skeletal woman casually hucked a large armchair with one hand. The window shattered and sprayed glass out of the building. In two quick motions her spear was in her hand and she hurled it out of the window and high into the night. There was a shriek as the chair smashed across the stones forty feet down.

“Harpy’s Tits, Sudraiel! What in all of the Secrets of Kalis was that for?” Somebody shouted from below.

The Guildmistress stood silhouetted by the shattered window, gazing out into the night. Her robe blew in the breeze from the newly opened window and her entire posture seemed ready to leap out of the opening and go to battle. She held out her hand, and the spear slapped back into it. Her gaze turned down into the courtyard and she swore at whoever had yelled. “Go fuck a muckgrabber, Tvora.”

The Heirs sat stunned in their chairs, watching the furious Guildmistress stare out into the night. Backlit and with spear in hand, she looked more a valkyrie than an octogenarian.

After a minute she turned around, jaw clenched. She stood behind the desk and stared at them. Her voice was calm, but with an undertone of cold fury “So. This is what’s been killing teams along the north road and hidden so well our search teams could not find it. And it almost killed you as well. I am glad it didn’t, and glad we know what lurks there so we can finally deal with it.” The fury leaked through, her voice increasing in volume. “Why did old Gemore have to be so blasphemously paranoid! A bunch of stupid fools trying to save themselves is what they were, and now it’s killed yet more good people! It’s yet another secret police headquarters or military arsenal or research facility with stupidly powerful and powerfully stupid security.”

Siltul made a few more emphatic marks on his slate as the Guildmistress fumed. His voice was dry even as his beard blew in the breeze swirling around the office. “I assume this dungeon will be prioritized next Delve Day. Do we want to send a team to scout and disable the exterior defenses?”

Sudraiel looked around for her chair, then turned to look out the window. She sighed. “Yes, of course. We’ll need a detailed written report from the Heirs by tomorrow afternoon. Start reaching out to the Delve Scholars. I’ll ask Jolba to do a debrief with the rest of the trainees tomorrow. This’ll be a valuable learning experience. Oh, and all of you?” She looked over all of the Heirs.

“I’m proud of you for this. This new dungeon has killed many adventurers before you, but you showed the best trait of adventures. You survived. Some teams would have gone back to kill the Sentries, but you did not. This sort of behavior is exactly what I wish to encourage with the training course, and I want you to know that I appreciate your taking those lessons to heart. I will be proud to have you graduate on the solstice.”

The rest of the Heirs darted guilty looks to Nathan.

Sudraiel caught the looks and smirked. “Thank you for the debrief. I apologize for my outburst, and Siltul will see that you get a finder’s fee for the Last Dungeon of Old Gemore. He will also walk you through the report we want and have you mark the dungeon’s location on a map.”

They recognized it for the dismissal it was, and were all getting to their feet when Sudraiel called out once more. “Nathan, can you stay behind for a moment?”

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